‘Swan Lake’ returns to SF Ballet with a few feathers out of place

Updated 2:59 pm, Sunday, February 21, 2016

Yuan Yuan Tan was technically assured, but Tiit Helimets was not at his best.

Yuan Yuan Tan was technically assured, but Tiit Helimets was not at his best.

Photo: Erik Tomasson / Erik Tomasson

‘Swan Lake’ returns to SF Ballet with a few feathers out of place

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Absent from the San Francisco Ballet’s home repertoire for six years, Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson’s production of “Swan Lake” made a welcome return Friday evening to the War Memorial Opera House. The welcome was extended mostly by the company’s dancers, who seemed to be waiting during the past month for the opportunity to bite into the repertoire’s most iconic “white ballet.”

They got that opportunity in the two performances seen Friday evening and Saturday afternoon. With all the incredible contemporary works offered by the company, dancing Odette-Odile can still seem the touchstone of a dancer’s career. One can disagree with elements of the San Francisco staging in both the narrative and the design, but the world has accustomed itself to variations on the 1895 Petipa-Ivanov Mariinsky version that prevail in today’s world.

What bothers here is the choice of a libretto, which sometimes seems there only to supply the connective tissue between the big, familiar moments. “Swan Lake” will always be the story of how an unsettled young noble with a limited attention span falls in and out of love and finds redemption in a watery grave. But in Tomasson’s 2009 staging, Prince Siegfried often disappears from the spotlight, returning for the two pas de deux; Tomasson devotes too much space to the boy’s aimlessness, offers a traditional lake scene, rushes through the choosing of the bride episode and subjects Siegfried to a wrestling match with Von Rothbart in Act 4.

That scene, with its brilliant shifting swan groupings, finds Tomasson at his most choreographically convincing, But overall, there is something abstracted about this “Swan Lake,” a feeling that was missing from Tomasson’s earlier, 1988 production. Regrettably, the choreography omits most of the essential mime from this version.

Dropping that gestural business seemed a mild handicap for Yuan Yuan Tan’s deceptively fragile Odette. After two decades with the company, her swan remains a model of technical assurance. Nobody on the roster deploys such exquisite arms, nobody arches the back with such sinew-defying amplitude. There’s a strength here that mitigates against victimization, a collaboration with the Tchaikovsky score, wanting only a more seamless attitude toward transitions. Yes, Tan’s fouettés lived up to the legend.

As Siegfried, Tiit Helimets was one of the revelations when this production was new. Friday, however, the Estonian artist danced much below his best. Balances and turns were skewed, ascents looked effortful, and the partnering of Tan’s wonderfully teasing black swan seemed downright frantic. Alexander Reneff-Olson introduced an almost Byronic Von Rothbart. Barring one mishap, the pas de trois grouping of Dores André, Taras Dimitro and Sasha de Sola exuded buoyant hedonism. In the Act 3 divertissement, Jahna Frantziskonis and Esteban Hernandez proved a beguiling Neapolitan couple. Apart from a stray arm or two, the swan corps approached the company’s best.

The physical production (scenery and costumes by Jonathan Fensom, projections by Sven Ortel) has not improved with the years, although new projections and a new palace gate in Act 1 are helpful. The ballet’s central symbol, the lake, has disappeared, replaced by what looks like a huge slab of licorice. The winding Art Deco staircases of the palace suggest a more contemporary period than suggested by the Georgian-era costumes; you half expect the Nicholas Brothers to come tapping down the stairs.

Saturday afternoon attention turned to Sofiane Sylve and Carlo Di Lanno, dancing their first San Francisco Ballet performances of Odette-Odile and Siegfried, and it took only a heated lakeside scene to convince observers that this is a genuine “Swan Lake” partnership, one that can safely take its place among the company’s preferred “Swan” couples.

Di Lanno, still a company soloist, epitomized youthful ardor as he bounced into the birthday party and flew across the stage. He greeted the swans with amusement, which evolved into something deeper. The couple restored a portion of the missing mime and, perhaps because of their European training, made all those gestures look singularly persuasive,

Martin West conducted the Tchaikovsky score a bit brusquely Friday; Ming Luke was of a more lyrical mind Saturday. In both performances, the suave violin solos of newly arrived concertmaster Cordula Merks lifted the spirits.